This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing from my Heart Radio. Imagine being in the middle of the ocean, in the pitch black of night, with only a sliver of the moon to illuminate the bobbing waves which obscure almost everything from your line of sight. The boat you were on moments ago is speeding off into the distance, and no one can hear your cries for help over the whir of the engine. You now only have your wits to save you from this nightmare.
My guest today knows this feeling from actual experience. John old Rich, along with his partner Anthony Sasinski, is the owner and operator of the Anna Mary, a lobster boat the trolls for its catch off the coast of Montauk Long Island. Their book, Speck in the Sea, A Story of Survival and Rescue, is the harrowing account of Aldridge falling aboard and finding himself alone in the open ocean. The Speck in the Sea, the title of the book suggests,
my name is Anthony Sosinski. My name is John Aldridge. Most fishermen will tell you their work is a calling, that it's in their blood. Despite it being the most dangerous profession in the US. And like many who were married to the sea, Anthony and John's called to the water began in childhood. So as a youth, I had was born in Brooklyn and my father, when I was first able to walk, would take me down to the
shoreline to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There was a pier there and we would fish for goals and little blackfish. And then we moved to Long Island Town, Oakdale. And when we moved to Oakdale, we had to learn how to swim. We had no choice. We couldn't be around the bay unless we learned how to swim. So there was Byron Lake Park. We went to learn how to swim Environln Park. It was always cold, it was spring. I hated going in the water because it was so
damn cold, and my father would take us. We had a nineteen foot like Jersey skiff and we would launch it at a Great River or Hexha State Park and we would fish the Great South Bay. We would go out to Fire Island Inlet and uh we would go far offshore with just a CB radio and a bottom machine and he would teach me how to navigate on
how to get back to Fire Island Inlet. And this one particular time, it was foggy and we wound up in Tobay Beach trying to get in, and there's these naked people that are jumping like because it was the nude beach at that time, And I was like, Dad, where did you get us lost to? You know, he knew what he was doing. Yeah, I think he did. He would think you were you were ready to learn
a lot of things that day. Yeah, So as a kid south Shore and then when did you decide your father obviously passes us on Like my dad, My dad would be in the water, and we grew up in
a town down where people along the water. A few people would have these bins on the side of their house and there was an inflatable inner tube of attire, a peach basket and some rope and beat up shitty old sneakers tied together with the laces, and you put the shitty sneakers on the old youth sneakers, You tie the rope around your waist, You put the peach basket in the inner tube and it floated out and my father would literally go around those great zap ango right foot,
and my brothers and I would dive down the lamb under his foot, go like this and go left foot. And when we came home we had baskets full of chowders, little necks, you know, you had it on the half shell, you had him raw, or we had the ones for the soup. And this is a big part of our lives.
We did it all. We did this by bicycle. We would ride our bikes down to the beat down to the school and we would walk in with waiters in a full wet suit and we would catch a basket of clams, put it in a bag and we'd leave it on the bottom right by the docks and idle out, uh, and then go back, get on the bus and go to school. And then in the afternoon, off out of school, we would put that bag of clams on the bar of our bicycle and we would ride from Oakdale to
West Sable too to sell our clams. And yeah, we'd sold them, like you know, we made a morning's pay before school in them. I was in seventh Yeah, yeah, well we did that too, but but so so you were a quote unquote commercial fishermen from early on. Oh yeah, we would go mackerel fishing in the springtime with my dad's boat. We would use the garbage cans to fill them up with the mackerel, and then we would sell them on the side of Montauk Highway. My father would
leave me there with the cooler. We'd come back an hour later and there would be nothing left, and I'd have the money and away we'd go, right by J and R. Tackle was commercial fishing the way you practice it as an adult. With that a foregone conclusion. At early I wanted to do that. Always wanted to be a fisherman. Yeah, a Montalk. Well, my dad took me at a young age. So then we would go on the weekends and we were weekend warriors out east. So on Friday night we would get in my father's Vista
Cruz station wagon just like the seventies show. We had one of those with the backpack seat, and um the way we would drive to Montalk from Oakdale. Now this is for John Aldrich. John, of course is the person who, when we tell the story eventually is the one who went into the water in the story that is the
book is Montalk. Most people perceive, you know, when you're out there, you eat as much fresh fish in the summertime and beyond as you can, because you always have this image of Montoka still a mecca of fish markets, like the best fish is coming out that dock and out of these boats. Patrick Wetzel, he's an old friend of mine, pass an old pal of mine, and I grew up with Pat Nassa shows a Massi pek. But now he's got a pool company. Lets hear my pool.
His company does not Pat, but but I mean that's an old old old friend, top shelf, childhood, top shelf. And all these guys head out there because and then they're from what you understand if you're not in the business, like this is it Montoka the place to go? That's still true? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of the younger guys that trying to get into the industry from back west, you know, end up out there still, you know, but mostly in the charter fleet, not in the commercial fleet,
because there's no new commercial fisherman really anymore. So we just it's not close effective. It's where is the fish coming from. It's coming from America, yeah, all over the world, coming from the docks, and not as much as you would think the freshest fish you're gonna get is on the East End, but a lot of the American fishermen will push the way because of sustainable practices. So the swordfish fleet left America and started fishing out a Trinidad.
So the swordfish American swordfish fleet moved and they can get a few for a dollar a gallon in Trinidad. So in the early nineties, myself, we would take the boats with the mother ship down to Puerto Rico and fish off of South America. Those fish went back to Puerto Rico, which then went into a container and was shipped the Faulton Fish Market, which then the same people
in Bay Shore sold their catch in New York. Today, with sustainability, the American longliner could not make a living with how much bait cost, how much fuel cost, how much observer program costs, the cameras, everything that goes along with it. They went out of business in America. They moved their operations elsewhere and they shipped the fish back American airline. So our local fish market is buying fish that were caught in South America, but they might be
caught from the American fleet. What are they still getting in montok off the coast of Long Island. Squid this year was amazing, like the best year locally they had. Tile fish Fleet still catches their quota. You know, each and every species is there an abundance, but the practices to make a living economically doesn't add up anymore for
a lot of fisheries. So I was told years ago that through whatever influence, through whatever manipulation, the laws, the state laws and county laws were shifted and tilted towards favoring recreational fishermen and not commercial fishermen. They were saying that they put a lot of restrictions on commercial fishermen, and they wanted people in party boats, and they wanted them to be buying beer and lunch and going out there,
and they wanted to get housing. And they thought it was better for the economy for the recreational fishing industry to be given the upper hand when it came to stripe bass, for sure, and that is that still in place for stripe baths. Basically it is that's a sport fish. On the day that this event happens, you were out fishing for what lobster and now so lobster and crab now the better lobsters. You gotta dive with divers on a shelf off the coast of the island. The pots.
Thing is, this isn't working as well anymore, is that true? No? No, you have pots? Oh yeah, we fished eight hundred with eight hundred pots in the water. Yeah, with fishing fifty miles from land. Right, So there's no diving. We're fishing on the continental shell. Right. And how deep is it there? Three hundred and upwoods of five hundred feet and the pots go all the way to the bottom. You put a pot three hundred feet down and you have how many pots? Eight hundred on a string with thirty on
a string? Right? And how many is one lobster per pot? No? We sometimes you catch a whole bunch. How do you do now, explain to people how a lobster but works. You put bait in the front part of it, which is the parlor, which is the kitchen, and so the lobsters will walk in. They'll eat at the bait and then say another lobster, are crable walking and it'll push
that lobster to the back in the pot. Now, when they get to the back of the pot, they fall in, and that's the parlor pot where they hang out, and in that section we have escape vents that size out the lobster. So certain size lobster could just walk in and walk out of the trap on a regular you know, they come in, they'll eat, they'll walk to the back of the trap, they'd be like, oh, we don't want to be here, and they'll walk right out the vent.
But when they legal size, they won't be able to walk out the vent, and that's how we catch them. Are people diving for lobster and around around the around the shoot, you know, the jetties and stuff like that, but recreationally not. That's the same as the surfer riding waves is the diver or diving for lobster. It's a recreational sport. There's no way that you're feeding New York State or the coast with someone swimming down and picking up There's not that many and we would be doing it.
We're fishing on a migratory animal, so our lobster is one of the reasons why we're that far off shores. Like you were saying about the die off, well, the lots of shells were getting thinner back in the late nineties, John and I will ensure a lobster and all around fishes Island and back then lobster and was very good in the Long Island Sound, and then there was a
die off that we lost biomass of the lopses. So at that point we bought a boat with a permit to fish as far out as America has a license under my big so we have a permit, and now that permit allows us to fish for other things. So we're not just fishing on lopses. We're also fishing on crab. But back when we first started this that there was a value that was very cheap on this particular item, so most people weren't fishing on them because you needed a lot of them. In New York State didn't have
processing plants to process these crabs. But today the crab is now a valuable commodity because crab priced throughout the war world has escalated. I'm sure that the deadliest catch had something to do with some of that, but they needed a substitute for other crabs. So this crab is what we're fishing on, so we're we don't really even target lopses anymore as much as we're targeting crabs. And lopses. Now the boat in question, the boat on the night of the event, was how long it is? How long?
It's a forty four ft boat. And when you're done, so to speak, when you're gonna take whatever the catches to market? The market is Montoka. You go somewhere else. I always yourself. And there's a one one guy or one family. You said was one people coming? We split it up. We are crabs come into the city and all ops is stay local at the fish farm. And I'm against right the sets where they go. What's the longest you deploy shall we say you're deployed for how long?
Two days? That's the most. You don't go out there for a month. No, no, no, no, not on atboat. We try to fill it up in two days and go home. So you're on the boat and it's the middle of the night. Correct when it when the incident? Yes, when in the morning? Probably described because I've been told and then in the book I've seen. I didn't read the book for it was a while ago. Tell me what happens? They're where and where are you? So Anthony
and Mike were asleep, you know. We we fished eight hours from land, so we left about eight o'clock at night, and you know, we have to getting everything settled down. The two of them went to sleep. I was on watch, and you know, it was keeping an eye on the radar and you know, making sure there's nothing around us.
Was the condition of the water. It was about four foot see, you know, a little little choppy, not much as we came off of a little bit of a storm of the day before, and I was supposed to get nice that day, so that's why we left. And then around to thirty in the morning, I was getting the boat ready to fish for that day with this new refrigeration system that we have on board, and I had to move some coolers around and get into some hatches.
And as I was doing that, two coolers were on top of each other on top of the hatch, and I took this like three ft long box hook and I hooked into the cool into the coolert to move him, which gave me another three ft towards the back of the boat I would be And the back of our boat doesn't have a back to it to transom. It's just opened. The deck is open to the flat deck, no transom straight out, straight out and that's when that's designed.
Why so the traps slide off the deck right into the water because we put and as I was pulling on that to handle snap, there's no has not nothing. And I went flying out of the back of the boat at you know, two thirty in the morning, forty five miles from land. The boats on autopilot, dare asleep, the noise of the boat, but you know, I can't hear anything. And you know right then and there that you know, no one in the world knows he's missing.
John old Ridge and Anthony Sasinski. If you enjoy conversations about the East end of Long Island, check out my episode with David rattray on and editor of the newspaper The Easthampton Star, whose family has owned the paper for three generations. I have friends and sag Harbor I don't see. I live in m against It. You know, I don't see him until October. And I'm willing to drive to sag Harbor. The sag Harbor people won't drive to m aganst.
There's a whole thing. I used to come out for the weekend and pack it all into two days, and now I can't even conceive of doing that it seems impossible to operate at that speed. There's a quality of perfection that didn't exist when I was a kid, and even a young person here, the quality of having the perfect weekend, the perfect margarite, of the perfect lobster bake, or something like that. So if there's a shift too, I think there's one of tone and expectation among people. Here.
To hear more of my conversation with David Ratre, go to Here's the Thing dot org. After the Break, John Oldrid shares how finding the will to survive the most challenging of circumstances is a choice. I'm Alec Baldwin and you were listening to hear the Thing the night John old Ridge nearly lost his life. He was heading out on a routine lobster hall on his vessel the Anna Mary,
like countless nights before. It was, however, an unlikely equipment failure that sent old Ridge flying through the air, off the back end of the boat and into the ocean. So I go into warr and I started freaking, are you relatively fit? Yeah? And you know, as soon as I hit the water, I realized that it's pretty warm. I don't know why I thought that, but it was warm, but I'm sure the adrenaline was just flying through me.
And I was in July July degree water, which you know you wouldn't go when you pulled seventy one degrees. And I was panicking, panicking, and I had my shots on T shirt, a little three inch pocket knife, and my fishing boots, and um, I was just about to drown, you know, because I exerted so much energy freaking out that I realized my boots was the only thing I could grab onto to catch another breath. So I kicked them off and grabbed them and I got another breath.
And then something in me just clicked, and I took the boot and I emptied the water out of it and created an air pocket with the boot, and I did that with both boots, and I put him under my arm. And I wasn't fighting to stay afloat. I was like I was floating with no effort. So that was like, gave me a second or two or two figure out, you know how screwed I really am. You know, the boats moving further and further away, the boat's gone
in seconds, basically because your chin is on the wa nighttime. Yeah, it's nighttime, and then you know you're on the water and then lit up so far, Yeah, you can only see it, but the back deck is lit up looking down and the big spotlight, if it was on, would be looking forward. So he's looking at a light that's getting dimmer and him really he's in the water. It's one something in the morning. When do you realize John's gone? So I am woken up by Mike, and Mike was
supposed to get woken up to go on watch. John is supposed to wake Mike up. Okay, So Mike wakes me up and says John's not on the boat. And that's at six am, and that's about what time we was supposed to start working. So I wake up to he's not there. That's how that starts off of me. And it's you know, you you can't believe it at first, and you know there was no I was in the bunk room. Next thing, he knows him up on the deck. You don't have your shoes on because you don't take
time to put shoes on. And I go up on deck and then I look at Mike because I have my navigation equipment. I look and I realized, wow, I'm sixty two miles from land. The boats on autopilot going south, so we went by you ended up where So were sixty miles from land when I woke up, and we have well, we have no idea when John Well, the gear was fifty two miles that we will go into. But we are assuming at this point if John was supposed to wake up Mike, that John would have fell
overboard some maybe twenty miles from land. Well, he could have fell overboard right when we went to sleep, so he should have fell overboard somewhere closer to land. So I thought, you know, I have to turn. I turned the boat around and I called the Coastguard and I explained to them that he's not on board the boat and where I am, and I begged them to send an aircraft due south of Montalk from life. They did. They sent every piece of equipment that the United States
is allowed to send. Did you ever have any other interactions with the Coastguard before I have? Yeah, what was it? What happened? Different things, anything from accidents to boat sinking. So I've been involved in the attempt rescue of friends that were never found. You went out to find him, Well, I was out. I was the last person to hear one of my friends screaming for help on the VHF radio and U boat off a block island. The boat sank.
He was screaming his coordinates to where he was never found. No, he didn't survive. In the morning, we gave him a life raft. It was the mating voyage of the boat, tricky currents out there. We think that fishing equipment gear had got tangled in his prop early on in the day. It was it was March third, and the water temperature
was thirty six degrees. We found the boat on the bottom with an oil slick coming up because when they sent the coast guard helicopter out to look for him, it was nighttime and this massive spotlight that is as bright as bright could be lights up the ocean, and the helicopter was spinning around in this one spot and we pull up and as the deck box that was on the boat with and one of his boots was
one of the boot was floating. It was I remember seeing a toothbrush floating and a deck brush and then it was just debris and they so take me through. You are found by the coast guard. How many hours after you went into the water, estimate twelve to fourteen hours, and then they take me through the stages of death. When you're floating in the water for fourteen hours. Well, it's you know, like, it was so overwhelming that I
had to break it down into small, little goals. I couldn't be so overwhelmed with how crazy the situation really is. So I would say to myself, all right, I just gotta stay alive to daylight. I just gotta stay alive to daylight. And once daylight came, I'm like, all right, I made it the daylight. I just gotta stay alive to find a buoy, because I'm thinking, how is anybody
going to survive in the middle of the ocean. You gotta grab onto something and it would be make me more visible, and so I would try to look for a booty to grab onto. But in the same sense, it's like in your head, you just you know, your mind is trying to tell you, you you know, this is so overwhelming, you can't do it, just give up. But I would imagine this. I would I would imagine there's a moment or many moments for the person in that situation where you realize that you can either decide to
give up and say I can't can't do this. I'm gonna decide and I had to drown. I had die. I mean, did you sit there and say to yourself at every time you like you have doubt, you sit there and go, I can't believe this is how I'm going to die? Yeah, And I said to myself, this isn't right. Made it. I was like, there's no way out like this, and that positive strength kept me going, I mean, keeping me focused on the positive and not the negative. You made a decision to try, Yeah, fisherman
and authors John Aldridge and Anthony Sasinski. If you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to subscribe to Here's the Thing on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. After the break, John Aldridge shares his experience stranded in open water watching the search party miss him again and again. I'm Alec Baldwin and you
were listening to hear the Thing. Once Anthony Sasinski realized his partner John Aldridge was missing in the open ocean, his next move was to alert the coast Guard and try to get word to Aldridge's family so we're on phone service stuff far out okay, no, so we we don't have communications with land. But my VHF radio was able to talk to the Coastguard. So I was able to communicate with the coast Guard. And so I didn't actually phone anybody's parents or anybody, because I didn't have
a means to do that. I was communicating with the pilot of one of the aircraft, I was communicating with the Coastguard station, and I was I had twenty plus fishing boats that I was communicating with on a VHF radio, trying to organize the search to look for him. So my whole day, from the minute I woke up, was trying to figure out how John fell overboard, where he could be, and how I can get help there as
fast as I could. Was really my intention. You had some experience with this, well, I I have, but it but not in this uh, not that close to home. You know, like everything that I was telling the coast Guard was an educated guess that I only had that to me as fact. I didn't try to recreate something
that I didn't know was fact. So like when I found the cooler handle that was broken, I knew that that cooler handle was attached to that cooler there, so I knew that I have hard evidence that prior to leaving the dock that handle was attached to the cooler. So as I started looking at our boat hook on the ground that go in the water, I didn't know
about the hook. I thought he grabbed the cooler handle and pulled on the cooler, and then he went snapped, and he went overboard backwards and left the cooler behind and the handle behind because they were moved halfway off of that hatch cover. But there was below deck, we have these tanks that are like massive fish tanks that keep the product alive, and that's what he was working on. So one of the tanks, the lid was open and
it was full of water. So my initial thing was to stick my head in the tank to see if he had drowned in there, because I mean, it's big enough to put two thousand pounds of crabs and lobster in it. He could easily be inside that thing dead. So that was determined right off the bat that that
was not the case. So I plotted two hours from where at six miles an hour seven miles an hour a where the boat would have been from a straight line from Montauk and it came to the forty fathom edge, which is twot of water, and I basically started my search there, and I told the coast Guard, I don't believe he fell overboard closer to land. I believe that he fell way further off shore than we initially thought. So then at that point the coast Guard had asked me.
They said, look, civilians cannot be in a military search, so we're going to do our military search. Would you coordinate the civilian search? So I said, of course I would. I mean, you know, I'm trying everything I possibly can. At this point, I'm sweating at my toes and I'm really trying to stay focused on the fact that he's not there and how are we going to find him? And we have I have the other fisherman who's trying
to chime in, calling the Coastguard wanting to help. I say, everybody switched the channel one so I have a different frequency and I can talk to them. And each person kept giving me where they were, and I started a grid with the boats, depending on the direction they were coming from, where they would join our search and what direction if I wanted them to go in the east and west, and I made a grid with twenty fishing boats in the area. But the problem is it's in
water that's moving, so the ocean doesn't sit still. The ocean has got current and it's moving. So that's where we were trying to get the coast guard to help us, because they were putting drift buoy's in the ocean to see what direction that drift was. But they were all trying to focus their attention on most it to lands because that's what they thought that he where he will last time. When's the last time you've seen him? Eight miles from land, so they started there, you know, when
the radiot from, and then where he is. So when I when daylight came and I first heard the helicopter way way off because there's no noise in the ocean. Water doesn't make a noise unless it hits something and there's nothing for it to hit, so it's super silent, and I heard those helicopters way way far in the distance, and then I knew he was awake. How grateful are you that this was the person on the boat with you, because it could have been like what Tommy Ball sack.
Who you work with around, isn't mom talk from Maryland. Sometimes we take the boat without each other. I'll take it with a crew, or he'll take it with a crew, and nobody knows anything. So if that happened, he was there, of course, if there wasn't, for any of those other people that we fished with, you know, no one's got all back except lost. He's a good person to have. The helicopters are coming and you you hear them. I see everything after that, I see the helicopter, see him twice.
I passed them twice and didn't see him my first pass. Back up myself and Mike. You know, I got to remember this too. Is we're in a forty five ft lopster boat. Okay, that's low sheer to the water. We don't have a tower, we don't have elevation. We're at sea level, all right. The ocean looks like a shag carpet. And if you are even looking for a volleyball and you know where it is, you only see it every five or six seconds and it disappears. That's if you
know it's there. So you could easily be fifty yards or thirty yards away from something, but you're looking in the other direction, or you're looking at you and it's down you don't see it. It's like a shag carpet between. He had a blue shirt on and he's got dark hair. You know what we had seen, me and Mike was and it was actually it was it must have been the second time we've seen him. Was the buoys that
he was had found. We saw two booties together and we both put the binoculars on it for a while, and then we came to the conclusion that we didn't see anything there, and we kept going so south. Soon after this this contact or this sense of the helicopters in him passing you twice and see what time was that, Well, the helicopters were all day long, gone back and forth. And how long did you how long did you hear helicopters before they got you? Because it must have been
torment to there. Yeah, I mean you were. I was turning it into a positive to a negative. I was turning it into go at least they're still looking for me. They're gonna find me. They didn't. They went he went past me, didn't see me. All right. I could just be like, oh my god, I'm gonna die. I can't believe it didn't see me. But I was like, all right,
at least he's still looking for me. So I had to be in my head and my mind and turn every instant in instance and every action into a positive thought because the negative was just so overwhelming and so powerful to take you down. And I was like, I can't even think about it. When you first started to hear that apparatus, figuring about him eventually coming nearer you, when missing you and when they finally got you out of the water, how long were you in the water
listening to the sound of helicopters? How long were you were? You? Were you expected and anxious they were gonna come and get you? And that lasting How long before they finally got you and pulled you out? Well, old day? So who finds you? What's the moment of contact? So I'm on, I'm on a buoye. I got the two big made
your way toward a boy. I made it to another buoye and I had these two big orange balls tied together, and I'm sitting in between them and a coast Guard jet flies by relatively low in the direct you know, in the area where I'm at and I didn't even prop playing yet. Oh yeah, Coast called jet and he went flying past, and I was like, wow, all right, he must be on a pattern, so he's gonna come
back around. So I kept looking in the direction that he flew, and sure enough, he came back and it was closer towards me, and I thought he might have seen me because I saw the pilot in the plane. And then about an hour later, I hear the Coast Gut helicopter come in right down on top of me, and I'm freaking because he can't land the plane. He's gonna summon them. So then they spun off over here,
you know, got to dive. That's just the swim already, and dropped the swimmer down to me and I was, you know, covered up in the water, holding onto my boots, and he tapped me on the shoulder and sir, sorry you okay. I whip around and look at him and I said, I got two more days left in me. Let's get the hell out of here. And he's like blowing away that I could, you know, even make a joke about anything. But someone told me that you were told that if you've been in the water. Even an
hour longer, you might have died. Yeah, they gave him me nineteen hours at that temperature. At that temperature was my weight, yeah, I mean when I came out of the water was nine degrees my core temperature. A lot of shark signings off the coast of the beaches this summer. What was the shark situation out there when you were As soon as I hit the water, immediately got infiltrated by birds, dive bomb and me trying to poke my
head and eyes or whatever they were doing. And then about an hour into it, sharks showed up like Robert Shaw and jos Yeah. Yeah, you're in the water. If it was if it was warmer, I had my little three inch pocket knife out ready to go. You're ready. I got two more days. That's a community out there that can really come together in a way that's like like any great community. We have an amazing town out there. Honestly, school system prepares your child for success. Honestly, if your
child listens, it's amazing. The teachers, the jack parna there is unreal. I feel really blessed to have found Mont Talk and the East End is home, honest Lee, you know, for us. The inlet is our getaway, so like we go out the inlet, like later after we leave you, we're gonna head out the inlet, so Mont talked to us. Hasn't changed in some ways compared to it would be
for land people. What did you feel like when you were Like when you when you finally found that you had, you know, obviously participated in saving your friend's life, You're carleague's life. The euphoria is as special as when your child is born. Honestly, that's what it feels like. It feels like, And it's an exhale too. It's like, well, I'm not sweating for my feet anymore, and he really is okay, and this is we don't have to do this anymore. It's like, thank you God, what whatever, however,
this has gone down. We're very fortunate you quit for a while, correct, So I quit fishing after my friend had died. That's when I quit fishing. Where um that that story was saying to you about off a block island? Yeah, And I came home that day. I got my daughter was one year old at the time. We put my wife and the daughter in the car and I drove to my grandmother's in Pennsylvania, and I had to make a decision on what I was gonna do. And I started to work helping Mike and I'm against it. Open
the seafood market and I'm against it. And then I worked in the meat cut as union for eight or nine months, and then I went back fishing again. It was traumatic and I needed to absorb what I was really getting myself into as a profession. And I have a baby. You have too, two daughters. They're not thirty five and thirty one. And I have a I have four grandchildren. Both of them have two children that both married the boat professionals nearby now Portland, Maine and in Minnesota.
My younger daughter was in Minnesota, so they but we do our best to try to see each other. And you know, I love them early and I'm super proud of them. I think that they're amazing. They are amazing. Makes you decided to go back to fishing. I couldn't leave it. It It was in my blood, you know, it was it was right down to Wick you said about walking around the bay and with you, you know, I chose fishing because I was I was like, I don't want to work, this doesn't work. I still don't work.
You know, I I'm doing something I totally enjoy and I am wanting to give you money to do it, saying it fortunate, straight up fortunate. Are you still doing it? Yeah? We're going tonight. Yeah, yeah, getting right on the boat. I could be Mike. You can't be Mike. I'll be the third guy. You don't need to know nothing to be Mike. Them off you did to wake up and go wait a second, you Jesus jacket, don't worry. Whose idea was it to write a book? Did somebody suggest
that to you? Well? It was completely self generated. It was part of the whole thing. I mean, you know, Jason Blum picked up some movie story for it, and then it just made sense to have a book. We hired a ghostwriter and we worked with her for thirteen months, back and forth and got it in our words basically and moving forward. Thank you so much, Anthony, Thank you so much. John. I'm glad you lived to be able to tell me the story. Thank you, and uh I
look forward to the movie. I can it could be great. It would be really cool. Thank you. Thanks for having us. My thanks to John old Ridge and Anthony Secsinski. I'll leave you with a song written about John old Rich. This is the Tale of Johnny Load by the Nancy Atlas Project. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio. You woke up in the morning, do duck and gear and get ice, but none in the evening. He'd work sixteen. Now it is not counting
of or spent. It lies And Johnny came ready, able, then steady, he said, Man, the first ships on me. Go catch a few winks down in the brain. Can I'll wake you when the feathoms run deep her About three in the morning, alone, Johnny's holland the boat sit on course to the head. Johnny pulled with his back and the handle just snabbed. And that's where this story be gins, he said. He old say, Johnnny Load, you can overboard. In the night fifteen north of the canyon,
the moons is campau with thoys blots. Then a night they said, hey, save Johnny Load. He's a pure mill lost out at see and he's counting on you and the mom Talk crew to bring him back to his antimary. There is sense in a slick, and the sharks come on quick, so you better play dead to survive. Lock your eyes on the field by